as a member of an AMO task force,
a Waterloo Region group composed
of staff from the cities of Waterloo,
Kitchener and Cambridge, and a third
network spearheaded by the City of
Oakville.
“We’re trying to anticipate what
some of the issues will be,” he says. “The
challenge that most of us are facing is
that we know that something is coming,
but we don’t know what it will look like.”
Ontario municipalities have been able
to glean some clues from other jurisdic-
tions where marijuana is already legal,
like the cities of Denver, Portland and
Seattle.
A key question is how marijuana will
be distributed. The proposed legislation
only specifies that the federal govern-
ment will license producers and set
product standards, that it will be illegal
to sell cannabis “through self-service
displays or vending machines” and that
online sales through licensed sellers will
be permitted where there are no local
retailers. It will be up to other levels of
government to define what a cannabis
retailer looks like; the pos-
sibilities could include
stand-alone
storefront
operations,
pharmacies
or LCBO stores. However,
objections have been
raised to the concept of
selling marijuana and alco-
hol from the same outlet.
“The City of Denver does
have a licensing and permit Tracey Cook
process in place for people
who want to sell marijuana, so if we
find the legislation is going to include
storefront dispensaries, then Denver
would be a good place to research.
One key piece we got from the city of
Denver was to be prepared for change;
don’t anticipate that everything’s going
to run smoothly from the onset, and be
prepared to adapt,” Turner says.
“The dispensary model is something
that municipalities should have a look
at, becaus e that could have implica-
tions for zoning and licensing bylaws,”
he says. “Municipalities will have to give
consideration as to whether they want
to license these outlets, or
whether they will set up
zoning
regulations—for
example, they may not
want a marijuana dispen-
sary to set up across the
street from a public school.”
In 2013, when the fed-
eral government changed
the regulations for medi-
cal marijuana, “we were
a little ahead of the curve.
We had created a zoning definition and
permission for medical marijuana pro-
duction facilities; it helped us in our
regulation against dispensaries,” Turner
says. “We had been asked to consider
a licensing approach.” However, after
examining Vancouver’s licensing system
for marijuana businesses, that option
was rejected because “they had a large
proliferation of dispensary operations,
and we started hearing about very sig-
nificant firearm-related robberies.”
Another consideration for munici-
palities will be where it will be legal
to light up. “So far, the laws that we’ve
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